FWIW, I disagree with willpell. I thought the move from +1/+0 to +1/+1 counters was very sensible for the re-envisaging of Clockwork. willpell didn't even provide any reason why the simpler and far more common +1/+1 counters were worse than the +1/+0 counters except "it feels all wrong". I fear you're getting a bit blinded by your own subjective nostalgia there.

Admittedly most of the Mirrodin clockwork cards were bad; the only modern Clockworker I've used much has been Clockwork Hydra along with untappers, which was fun, and Clockwork Dragon which kept coming up in drafts. But the Mirrodin clockworkers were very, very far from "worst homage ever". Time Spiral has many candidates for that undesirable honour.

Clockwork Steed is one of ten artifact creatures with “Clockwork” in their title. Clockwork Gnomes from Homelands doesn’t really resemble the others, so I’ll talk about the nine that all share the lose-counters-then-wind-up functionality that Mr. Steed here has.

The first such creature, Clockwork Beast, appeared in the very first Magic set, Alpha, and from talking to people that were playing back then, the card was beloved. I can see why--the flavor is quite good, and you get a creature that starts out bigger than Craw Wurm for the same amount of mana in any color deck.

As with many Magic cards, when something is liked, it gets turned into more cards. Clockwork Avian showed up in Antiquities, and Homelands brought the Steed and its near-twin, Clockwork Swarm. The Steed and the Swar... (see all)

I loved the Clockwork creatures and believe that the first two along with Clockwork Swarm were perfectly executed. The Steed's immunity to artifact creatures makes no flavor sense but made the card an MVP for my Johnny purposes, making it unblockable with things like Thran Forge or just slapping Fear on it and sideboarding swampwalk against black.

Mirrodin's Clockwork creatures were all crap. Worst homage ever. If Wizards isn't willing to use +1/+0 counters anymore, then I'd just as soon they didn't try to make Clockwork dudes, as using +1/+1 counters for them feels all wrong. And the Condor was the absolute worst - it just dies after a few attacks, without even starting out oversized like the Beetle. I like the clockwork archetype, but it might be that Magic just can't do justice to it anymore under the "unified counter types" paradigm.